


s t (r) a y

by balconys



Category: Free!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Sleepy domestic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balconys/pseuds/balconys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Rin still feels volatile sometimes, slipping in and out of the water like a moon between phases, his laugh too big, too bright – receding far off across promised oceans and Haru thinks about the time he won’t be fast enough, chasing echoes knee-deep in shifting sand, his mouth full of water and odd-fitting letters.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	s t (r) a y

**Author's Note:**

> repost from tumblr. written to dissolve me by alt-j pls listen/cry with me

And picture this: an apartment room, darkness roosting over the bed. Still as sea. Slowly, Haru blinks, as sleep unsilts itself, and the red of Rin’s hair is the first thing that blooms foggily into vision, catching light from morning’s half-opened bottle of dawn; it spills golden from a crack between the curtains in muted tones, stretches slow, over the soft curve of Rin’s cheek. Haru stays cocooned in the stillness and tries to snatch the picture into memory.

(Rin still feels volatile sometimes, slipping in and out of the water like a moon between phases, his laugh too big, too bright – receding far off across promised oceans and Haru thinks about the time he won’t be fast enough, chasing echoes knee-deep in shifting sand, his mouth full of water and odd-fitting letters,)

Slower still, Haru’s fingertips ghosting over Rin’s jaw – snapping back; Rin’s brow wrinkles as morning draws him into wakefulness, his limbs shuffling beneath the sheets as pockets of cold air seep into their toes. “Haru?” his name breaks at the end and falls back into the lull of a softer place. Rin blinks at him, slow. He looks like a child, the way a yawn knits itself into the edge of his mouth. Rin stretches out the stitches and it comes out in a searing cloud of air, warms all the spaces between their bodies. Haru wrinkles his nose nonetheless. “You up already?”

Haru hums, and his fingers come inching up the side of Rin’s face again; unbidden, he tucks a loose strand falling over his nose behind his ear and it makes a smile curve across Rin’s mouth, a sharp half-moon bright in the dark, and Haru feels like he’d left a shard of candy on his tongue overnight, the way a kind of cloying sweetness floods his mouth. He swallows.

“…What’s up?” Rin says, woolly, as Haru’s fingers trail down his neck, leaving cold fleeting pinpricks. Haru’s quiet as he moves closer, into the pooling sunlight illuminating Rin’s half-lit shoulder, burrowing his nose against the dip of his throat, his fingers curled beneath his ear. Rin laughs at this, airy, “you’re cold, Haru,” and shivers around Haru’s head, his leg crawling up playfully to rest over his hip.

“Mm,” Haru swallows, again. A light brush of lips on skin, and: “you’re warm,” Haru breathes out slow against the cylinder of Rin’s neck, all dizzying heat and hope, and, and,

(He tears his eyes away – because of fear, he realizes, he’s afraid; he’s afraid of so many things and Rin always makes him feel like he’s thirteen all over again, watching dying stars collapse into the embers of something lost. But then, he remembers that he isn’t thirteen, not anymore, and Rin’s light is no longer the kind that hurts but burns, a steady throb beneath his skin, a heady ache that dips into a giddy high. That things aren’t so easy to lose, if you grab hold of it.)

–Rin’s pulse stutters into life beneath Haru’s lips, his throat bobbing half in shadow. You’re going to meet that scout tomorrow, aren’t you, is what he doesn’t say, instead: “You’re taking me out today, remember. I don’t mind if we’re not having mackerel,” as Rin laughs through the sleep settling once again on his lashes. Haru closes his eyes, loses his hand in Rin’s hair. Rin’s birdpulse flutters wildly in his throat, and Haru captures it between his lips.


End file.
